Un estudio sobre la comprensión de términos espacio-temporales en niños de 4 a 6 años

  1. Torrecilla, Gloria
  2. Brito de la Nuez, Alfredo G.
  3. Carranza Carnicero, José Antonio
Journal:
Journal for the Study of Education and Development, Infancia y Aprendizaje

ISSN: 0210-3702,  1578-4126

Year of publication: 1984

Issue: 26

Pages: 111-120

Type: Article

DOI: 10.1080/02103702.1984.10822038 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openDialnet editor

More publications in: Journal for the Study of Education and Development, Infancia y Aprendizaje

Sustainable development goals

Abstract

This study investigated whether the comprehension of the following pairs of words: before/after, ahead/behind, and first/last, could be related to their dominant usage in the linguistic community, task complexity, asymmetry between terms, and subjects� age. 90 adults and 180 children (4-6 years old) participated in the study. The adults were asked to define words in order to discover their dominant meaning, and Children had to performe tasks involving three contexts: spatial, spatio-temporal, and temporal. Results show that �before/after� is understood at an earlier age in a temporal sense; �ahead/behind� is understood in a spatial sense; and first/last is better understood in a temporal context. These are in line with the adults� definitions though these tended to be ambiguous. Task complexity seems to influence comprehension: absence of features in objects and inversal grammatical construction make the task more difficult. Results suggest that the Semantic Features Hypothesis does not account for the acquisition of meaning.

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